‘HIGH RISK’ PAEDOPHILE TOURED YORK CHRISTMAS MARKET WITH CHILD, COURT HEARS
A “high risk” paedophile defied a court ban by touring the York Christmas Market with a seven-year-old child, the city’s crown court heard.Garry Dover Afflick, 60, who has served lengthy prison sentences for sexually abusing children, was staying at the probation hostel in Boroughbridge Road, York, after finishing his latest stint behind bars.
Rob Galley, prosecuting, said Afflick spent the afternoon of November 22 with the child, the child's mother, and another man, touring the Christmas Market and visiting a Wetherspoons in the city centre.
He is banned from being with or having contact with any child under a sexual harm prevention order (SHPO).
Neither of the other adults in the group knew of Afflick’s criminal past, said Mr Galley.
It includes serving prison sentences for indecently assaulting children and breaching orders designed to protect children from him.
Probation officers have assessed him as a “high risk sex offender,” Mr Galley told the court.
Defence barrister Sean Smith said Afflick had a poor education and hadn’t believed he was breaching the SHPO.
“In his mind he didn’t speak to the seven-year-old, so he wasn’t communicating or contacting them,” he said.
But the Recorder of York, Judge Sean Morris, told Afflick: “Not to have any contact with anyone under the age of 18 ….
that is not a difficult concept, even for someone with your problems.
It was a deliberate breach.
You could have walked away, indeed you did and then you came back again.” The judge said that Afflick had not arranged the meeting with the child and at all times he was in public, so the risk to the child was "minimal".
He gave Afflick a six-month prison sentence suspended for two years and ordered that all future cases involving Afflick should come before him.
Afflick, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to breaching the SHPO.
He had been in custody since his arrest in November and in 2019 was jailed for 40 months for two earlier breaches of the order.
